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L.A. Company Wins China Hyperloop Deal
- Leary 8y agoDoes anyone know why they are building it in a seemingly less populated/ prosperous province?
- ebikelaw 8y agoSince the capacity of a Hyperloop system is close to zero (less than 1000 passengers per hour, much less than a lane of highway and two orders of magnitude less than an ordinary railroad), it doesn't really matter where you put it.
- DenisM 8y agoShould we be comparing it to trains or planes though?
- ebikelaw 8y agoDid you mean should we compare it to airports? LAX will land 54 aircraft in the 60 minutes starting now, and I assure you that amounts to rather more than 1000 pax/hour.
- Retric 8y agoLAX is 3,500 acres and only provides 1/2 the land area need for a flight. Worse you can't build anything tall near by and need all that land close to cities, making high speed trains a surprisingly good trade-off.
- calcifer 8y agoOf course, it's just a different form of public transportation. It needs to be competitive on a cost per passenger per hour basis in order to be viable.
- golem14 8y agoCare to back up your statement with sources or data ? I see these claims every now and then and never have seen a decent justification. Would be great to have that to have a more informed debate ...
- ebikelaw 8y agoThe 2013 Hyperloop paper claims a capacity of 840 pax/hour under some pretty optimistic assumptions. I'm willing to grant them all these assumptions because this number is tiny and pathetic. A highway has a nominal capacity of 1800 vehicles per hour at a 2-second following distance, which works out to a capacity of at least 1800 people/hour and at most, in a dedicated bus lane, something more like 20000 per hour. Railroad capacity is much higher. Even bad railroads like UK National Rail have demonstrated over 200k pax/hour into a single station.
- golem14 8y agoThanks for the pointer: Here is another one, maybe more recent: https://ggwash.org/view/32078/musks-hyperloop-math-doesnt-add-up https://ggwash.org/view/32078/musks-hyperloop-math-doesnt-ad... Some good points, but I also think that the train system is overhyped here (comparing a single hyperloop v1.0 with a single terminal with a whole train station isn't as useful as it could be.) [Aside: Also, knowing the knots Palo Alto and other cites tie themselves in to deal with the high speed lane up to San Francisco, I'm not sure that HSR there will ever be successful, no matter how much $$$ and time is spent. Drives me nuts] I also don't know how to compare highway costs - dunno what it would cost to increase one lane between SF and LA, plus adding a lane doesn't increase capacity linearly AFAIK.
- bobthepanda 8y agoThe problem with CAHSR is that they decided to go whole hog on brand new high speed rail pretty early, and that they specified the top speed and expected travel times as a matter of law. Realistically speaking, it's a lot more cost-effective to bring the slowest sections up to good enough speeds for medium-high speed rail. Each 10MPH increase in max speeds lead to diminishing returns.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- kentm 8y agoLooks like the eventual plan is to link the airport to a tourist spot and the city is just the first stop on the way through. Might also be cheaper/easier to do in a less populated area.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoAre they tunneling? That area is really rocky and mountainous, unless it is going on a viaduct I don’t see how this will work out.
- kentm 8y agoThe article is light on specifics, so no idea.
- bilbo0s 8y ago"... I don’t see how this will work out ...." That's how most Chinese infrastructure projects start. I saw Ningbo in 1992. I look at it today and, yeah, can you say different? I thought Three Gorges would be impossible, even for the Chinese. A few key innovations later and there it is. (Subtle innovations which, in my defense, a reasonable engineer would never have seen coming.) If there's one thing they're good at over there, it's building infrastructure. I'll give them that.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoThe last time I was in ningbo was 2004. Is it really that different today? Building a dam isn’t that hard? Definitely not impossible if you are willing to displace a few million citizens. But tunneling under granite for 30+ km? Yes, possible, but it won’t be cheap. I don’t think the Chinese would do that, it will definitely be a vacuum enclosed viaduct to match what they did with HSR.
- bilbo0s 8y ago"... Building a dam isn't that hard ..." ??? Three Gorges is a mile and a half long almost. (maybe a tad longer.) Almost what? 6 or 7 hundreed feet tall. Ship locks and ship lifts too! For what? 10 thousand tons or so would be my guess? Not to mention entirely new ports to accommodate new heavy shipping inland. New walls and other flood control measures. And all of it designed to concert in such a manner that they never exceed the design specs of the dam. Displacing citizens is the LEAST of the problems that project faced. Building ANY dam is definitely not to be characterized as "not that hard". Building Three Gorges falls on the "near impossible even with backing of wealthy nation state" end of the scale.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- arblegobblebrbl 8y agoLittle to no environmental regs, NIMBYism, or corruption
- Gargoyle 8y agoHacker News has assured me repeatedly that this is an imaginary technology that cannot possibly work, so I assume this must be fake news.
- cmdli 8y agoI think the criticism isn't that it couldn't possibly work, but rather that it was impractical and expensive. Basically, its the modern monorail.
- misterbwong 8y agoYes, but many of the criticisms revolve around land acquisition and capital funding. Two problems that China can easily sidestep.
- arblegobblebrbl 8y ago"impractical and expensive" are invalid criticisms in the face of no other alternatives other than more cars and freeways. The monorail at Disneyland works great and so does the one in Seattle.
- _Schizotypy 8y agoYea, monorails do work great. They don't need to be surrounded by a vacuum tube, which is the impractical and expensive part.
- agumonkey 8y agoStupid idea, could there be reduced pressure (instead of near vacuum) and air pump/exhaust on each end of the vehicle ?
- curtis 8y agoI think something similar to the original Hyperloop proposal can work, but I'm not going to actually believe it until I see at least one real world implementation.
- 8y ago
- dbatten 8y agoPaywall work-around: https://t.co/jZyOpZbbtD https://t.co/jZyOpZbbtD
- dbatten 8y agoCompletely serious question given the downvotes: Is this discouraged or banned on HN? Whenever I hit a paywall from an HN link, I immediately go to the comments to see if somebody has linked to the full article. Thought I'd help folks out since nobody had done that for this article yet, but if I'm out of line I won't do it again.
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoYou might be being downvoted because your link doesn’t avoid the paywall.
- dbatten 8y agoReally? Works for me... That would explain it though.
- dafw 8y agohow did you find the work-around?
- tomhoward 8y agoThe most reliable workaround for WSJ (and NYT, Economist, etc) is Archive.is. In this case: http://archive.is/5n84J http://archive.is/5n84J
- throw_awy_1 8y agoVery cool to see this technology progress. Will be interesting to track. China certainly has shown that it both can invest in and build public infrastructure at an amazing scale and pace. It's a little concerning that this isn't really a sale - it's a joint venture. From the article: "HyperloopTT will form a joint venture with the Tongren authorities, according to the Guizhou provincial government, though the company’s announcement didn’t say whether it would be expected to transfer technology." Has to be taken with a bit of caution as we've seen how this worked out in high speed rail: "China's early high-speed trains were imported or built under technology transfer agreements with foreign train-makers including Alstom, Siemens, Bombardier and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Since the initial technological support, Chinese engineers have re-designed internal train components and built indigenous trains manufactured by the state-owned CRRC Corporation." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China] You'll find that China now is battling for dominance in the global high speed rail market and the formerly leading European providers (Seimens, Altrom) and in trouble and may have to merge just to survive. "European rivals unite as CRRC threatens to corner train market " [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-27/alstom-siemens-forget-high-speed-rail-feud-amid-asian-onslaught https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-27/alstom-si...] [https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and-expertise/the-market-for-high-speed-trains-stays-the-course-201502.html https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...]
- ebikelaw 8y agoChina probably sees it as being in their long-term interest to prop up American hyperloop companies so that Americans don't come to their senses and build trains. The longer we're distracted by hyperloops, on-demand taxi services, and self-driving cars the deeper our technological hole becomes.
- lightrebar 8y ago>so that Americans don't come to their senses and build trains And how is that working out for California? Rail is by far the single most expensive form of transportation on a per-passenger basis.
- asdfman123 8y agoWait, the US finally comes up with some new cool mass-transit technology and we're not even building it here? Shame.
- meddlepal 8y agoWe can't build any public infrastructure in the US anymore. Too complicated between environmental regs, NIMBYism, and corruption.
- arblegobblebrbl 8y agoWe only got things done in the past when a Big Power From Above forced it into being so
- curtis 8y ago> We can't build any public infrastructure in the US anymore. I know it feels that way, but it's not strictly true. Here in Seattle in the last decade we've built a new floating bridge, multiple miles of underground light rail track, and nearly two miles of deep bore road tunnel. I think there is a real problem that our new infrastructure is way too expensive and takes way too long to build, but we've demonstrated that we can definitely build new stuff.
- blackrock 8y agoSeattle's light rail is mediocre. I wish they had gone full in with a heavy rail and subway system instead. They could've used that to link up Seattle, Tacoma, Redmond, Kent, Bainbridge Island, Vashon Island, and the entire Seattle area. And to keep costs of building the infrastructure down, then they should consider outsourcing it, and hiring Chinese labor. (Apparently, the Chinese are very good at building railroads.) That way, you keep development costs down, and afterwards, the local citizens can enjoy first-world infrastructure, at low rates. But, when infrastructure projects become billion dollar estimates, then that just kills any opportunity of it ever being developed. Simply, because it now becomes a major high-paying jobs program.
- 8y ago
- seanmcdirmid 8y agoTongren county? That is like out in the middle of nowhere (well, near fenghuang in hunan) and is only known as a tourist destination for seeing Miao (Hmong) villagers. Strange. Backpackers should visit this place, it’s like yangshuo/Lijiang before they became saturated.
- blackrock 8y agoThis move was very puzzling to me, in light of Trump's trade tactics. Especially, of his accusations that China "steals" American technology. So, given this, why would any new American company, choose to enter into a 51/49 partnership with China? Where China has the majority share, and where the American company must share with their Chinese partner, all the system processes, techniques, and new technology of their product. This is just adding fuel to the fire, and the resentment that Americans have of the Chinese people. Here, the American company is willingly entering into such a business agreement. The Chinese side is not holding a gun to the American company's head. For the Chinese side, they are investing a lot of money into this research project, to fund this hare-brained idea. So, there is a lot of risk on their part, that nothing will emerge from this. The alternative, is that the American company can just choose not to do it. Don't accept the money. Go it alone. Don't enter the Chinese market. The rest of the world is a huge playground as it is.
- Mountain_Skies 8y agoPolitical theater isn't the same as business opportunity analysis. Also keep in mind that the US presidency has a limit of two terms. If Trump enters into the calculations, he doesn't enter into them permanently. Transportation systems, especially rail, are long term investments.
- imgabe 8y agoIt's not like the US is investing in rail technology. If we're not going to build it, China will.
- stale2002 8y agoWhy would the american company care about "adding fuel to the fire" or "resentment"? It is their company. They presumably care about making money. And if someone offers them lots of money, why wouldn't they accept it?
- dghughes 8y agoI wonder if this has something to do with the Belt and Road Initiative. A huge corrupt money sponge.
- benbojangles 8y agoBasically means China will learn and develop their own hyperloop technology based on other's plans.
- wpdev_63 8y agoWhile I was traveling in Beijing I remember hearing stories that the Chinese hired Japanese contractors to build the rail. Had them build one track of the rail and sent them home. Then they copied their design and built the rest of the railway.
- pixelpp 8y agolol China will steal this company's tech in 3...2...1...